centswould put one penny on each of the six possible combinations of three digits. The number
840, combinated, would include 840, 804, 048, 084, 408, and 480.
Practically everyone played every day in the poverty-ridden black ghetto of Harlem. Every day,
someone you knew was likely to hit and of course it was neighborhood news; if big enough a hit,
neighborhood excitement. Hits generally were small; a nickel, dime, or a quarter. Most people
tried to play a dollar a day, but split it up among different numbers and combinated.
Harlem's numbers industry hummed every morning and into the early afternoon, with the runners
jotting down people's bets on slips of paper in apartment house hallways, bars, barbershops,
stores, on the sidewalks. The cops looked on; no runner lasted long who didn't, out of his pocket,
put in a free "figger" for his working area's foot cops, and it was generally known that the numbers
bankers paid off at higher levels of the police department.
The daily small army of runners each got ten percent of the money they turned in, along with the
bet slips, to their controllers. (And if you hit, you gave the runner a ten percent tip.) A controller
might have as many as fifty runners working for him, and the controller got five percent of what he
turned over to the banker, who paid off the hit, paid off the police, and got rich off the balance.
Some people played one number all year. Many had lists of the daily hit numbers going back for
years; they figured reappearance odds, and used other systems. Others played their hunches:
addresses, license numbers of passing cars, any numbers on letters, telegrams, laundry slips,
numbers from anywhere. Dream books that cost a dollar would say what number nearly any
dream suggested. Evangelists who on Sundays peddled Jesus, and mystics, would pray a lucky
number for you, for a fee.
Recently, the last three numbers of the post office's new Zip Code for a postal district of Harlem
hit, and one banker almost went broke. Let this very book circulate widely in the black ghettoes of
the country, and-although I'm no longer a gambling person-I'd lay a small wager for your favorite
charity that millions of dollars would be bet by my poor, foolish black brothers and sisters upon,
say, whatever happens to be the number of this page, or whatever is the total of the whole book's
pages.
Every day in Small's Paradise Bar was fascinating to me. And from a Harlem point of view, I
couldn't have been in a more educational situation. Some of the ablest of New York's black
hustlers took a liking to me, and knowing that I still was green by their terms, soon began in a
paternal way to "straighten Red out."
Their methods would be indirect. A dark, businessman-looking West Indian often would sit at one
of my tables. One day when I brought his beer, he said, "Red, hold still a minute." He went over
me with one of those yellow tape measures, and jotted figures in his notebook. When I came to
work the next afternoon, one of the bartenders handed me a package. In it was an expensive,
dark blue suit, conservatively cut. The gift was thoughtful, and the message clear.
The bartenders let me know that this customer was one of the top executives of the fabulous
Forty Thieves gang. That was the gang of organized boosters, who would deliver, to order, in one
day, C.O.D., any kind of garment you desired. You would pay about one-third of the store's price.
I heard how they made mass hauls. A well-dressed member of the gang who wouldn't arouse
suspicion by his manner would go into a selected store about closing time, hide somewhere, and
get locked inside when the store closed.The police patrols would have been timed beforehand.
After dark, he'd pack suits in bags, then turn off the burglar alarm, and use the telephone to call a
waiting truck and crew. When the truck came, timed with the police patrols, it would be loaded
and gone within a few minutes. I later got to know several members of the Forty Thieves.
Plainclothes detectives soon were quietly identified to me, by a nod, a wink. Knowing the law
people in the area was elementary for the hustlers, and, like them, in time I would learn to sense